CHICAGO – Biggest win of the year? That’s understating the 94-90 win at Chicago that puts the Pistons 2½ games up on the Bulls with five games to play.
“Hopefully, there’s bigger ones to come. But for four of our starters – and they all agreed – that’s the biggest win of their NBA career,” Stan Van Gundy said. “The most meaningful win of their NBA career for all of our starters except Reggie. But we’ve got bigger things to do. So we’re not there yet.”
Reggie Jackson – the only Pistons starter who’s ever played in a playoff game – made four clutch free throws in the final 20 seconds and the Pistons held the Bulls to just two Jimmy Butler free throws in a span of eight possessions as they opened up a seven-point lead, the largest for either team, with 43 seconds to play.
“We did a great job of crowding the paint, continued to talk, take care of each other, communicate on defense and find a way to try to protect each other and make it difficult,” said Jackson, who scored 7 of his team-high 22 points in the fourth quarter. “If they were going to make a shot, we wanted to make sure it was tough.”
The Bulls shot 30 percent in the fourth quarter and 39 percent for the game. They played without Derrick Rose (elbow) and Taj Gibson (ribs), but the Pistons were coming off a grinding loss to Dallas on Friday in which three starters played 40-plus minutes while the Bulls were off.
“Our guys fought hard,” Van Gundy said. “We were tired. I think they were tired, too. Their depth is down. Both teams were running on fumes. We certainly were. But I thought our guys gutted it out pretty good. I was really proud of ’em tonight.”
“In the third quarter, I looked over and saw a lot of guys with their hands on their knees and I was like, ‘Dang, this is a battle that’s going to be who wants it more at the end and who can make the most shots and get the most stops,’ ” said Tobias Harris, who finished with 21 points, seven boards and four assists. “Everybody was tired. But just to grind this win out is big for us.”
The win not only gives the Pistons a 2½-game lead over Chicago for the final playoff berth in the East – the Pistons remained in the No. 7 spot, a half-game ahead of Indiana, which won at Philadelphia – it gives them the critical tiebreaker over the Bulls, having won the season series 3-1 with their other wins coming in overtime and four overtimes. If the Pistons were to win three of their last five games, they’d clinch a playoff berth even if the Bulls closed 6-0.
“We feel like we got a little more comfortability, but you can’t think like that,” Jackson said. “We need each and every one. I’m not sure how many we have left. Five? We need all five. We’re really in a position where we control our destiny to get into these playoffs.”
The Pistons put all five starters in double figures once again, but Van Gundy felt like he was groping to find something he could hang his hat on offensively with fatigue clearly wearing on his go-to scorers.
“We were running uphill,” he said. “But so were they. If you go back and watch the film of that game and you see every free throw, you got eight of the 10 guys bent over, grabbing their shorts. Jimmy Butler was exhausted from having to do so much and having to play so many minutes. It was a lot of guys who knew how important the game was and wanted to win it.”
Caldwell-Pope seemed to catch a second wind after a first half in which he barely dented the score sheet, hitting two big shots late in the third quarter to give the Pistons a five-point lead. Chicago’s Aaron Brooks gave the Bulls a lift, though, scoring 12 second-half points, and his tough floater with 9:13 to go put Chicago ahead by two. But Caldwell-Pope answered with a triple 15 seconds later and the Pistons never trailed again.
“We’ve shown we can play in tough games,” Jackson said. “It’s more about being consistent and trying to find our stride. So we’ll find out what we’re made of. We found out we’re tough-minded tonight and we are who we thought we were. We somehow show up, but you’ve got to do it nightly.”
Harris wasn’t around for the first three Pistons-Bulls games this season, joining the Pistons six weeks ago at the trade deadline. But he couldn’t keep a grin off his face in the locker room, his aching feet and ankles plunged into ice, relishing the win that had him agreeing with Van Gundy – it was the biggest of his career.
“Most definitely,” he said. “I think that’s what makes it even more enjoyable, even more fun, is coming back in the locker room with all these guys and just knowing that we came out and we really did something big tonight. We grinded out a tough battle and we played our butts off.”